Hi everyone, I’m Simona, 27 years old, from Italy.
I just finished reading both The Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted and I loved them both. They made me think about when I realized that the scripted way was not for me and now I would like to share my story with you.
I studied Finance in Milan and started working before graduating. I thought Investment Banking was my way, but I’ve not been confirmed after the summer internship (thankfully I can say now). So I tried something similar: consulting. I spent 11 months in a big firm, but I could not believe that I would have spent the next 15-20 years of my life to become like some people working there. I knew that my way was to become an entrepreneur - I just did not know how.
The first time I had the epiphany was at 21, when I realized that Mark was creating Facebook as well as other innovators were changing the world at my same age. They were having an impact! Leaving a sign! Making millions! And what about me? I was comparing exam grades with my mates. Something was wrong.
This feeling grew stronger one day during my internship, when all my colleagues were scared and anxious and stressed out because of a meeting we would have been attending in a few hours with the CFO of an important company. Again, something was wrong: I did not want to be the guy preparing the papers, frightened by the important guy. I wanted to swap places.
When I got back to university for my last year, I enrolled in a class about Entrepreneurship and Business planning, to figure something out. We had to “create a startup” in 4 months and present it and its results for the final examination.
I pitched my idea and 4 guys joined me. We created a startup that created boxes of ingredients, ready to prepare meals in a few minutes. I thought it was a revolution...just to find out a week after the exam that a REAL startup incubated in my SAME university was already doing it. Lesson learned: you cannot “pretend” to create a company - either you do it or not.
Anyway, thanks to this course, I had the third epiphany (yeah, I mean, I just wanted to be sure) when my colleagues in consulting were trying to predict the future of a new little Italian fintech startup comparing it to an ex startup with millions of revenues in the past 10 years in the fashion industry - my face was like “are you kidding?”. I realized that I knew more than them on startups and that I should use this knowledge for something useful. For example creating my startup.
That’s when I contacted on LinkedIn a guy from my town who created a startup exactly as it was in my mind and told him “I want to do the same”. He replied “you just have to jump”
And I jumped.
I just finished reading both The Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted and I loved them both. They made me think about when I realized that the scripted way was not for me and now I would like to share my story with you.
I studied Finance in Milan and started working before graduating. I thought Investment Banking was my way, but I’ve not been confirmed after the summer internship (thankfully I can say now). So I tried something similar: consulting. I spent 11 months in a big firm, but I could not believe that I would have spent the next 15-20 years of my life to become like some people working there. I knew that my way was to become an entrepreneur - I just did not know how.
The first time I had the epiphany was at 21, when I realized that Mark was creating Facebook as well as other innovators were changing the world at my same age. They were having an impact! Leaving a sign! Making millions! And what about me? I was comparing exam grades with my mates. Something was wrong.
This feeling grew stronger one day during my internship, when all my colleagues were scared and anxious and stressed out because of a meeting we would have been attending in a few hours with the CFO of an important company. Again, something was wrong: I did not want to be the guy preparing the papers, frightened by the important guy. I wanted to swap places.
When I got back to university for my last year, I enrolled in a class about Entrepreneurship and Business planning, to figure something out. We had to “create a startup” in 4 months and present it and its results for the final examination.
I pitched my idea and 4 guys joined me. We created a startup that created boxes of ingredients, ready to prepare meals in a few minutes. I thought it was a revolution...just to find out a week after the exam that a REAL startup incubated in my SAME university was already doing it. Lesson learned: you cannot “pretend” to create a company - either you do it or not.
Anyway, thanks to this course, I had the third epiphany (yeah, I mean, I just wanted to be sure) when my colleagues in consulting were trying to predict the future of a new little Italian fintech startup comparing it to an ex startup with millions of revenues in the past 10 years in the fashion industry - my face was like “are you kidding?”. I realized that I knew more than them on startups and that I should use this knowledge for something useful. For example creating my startup.
That’s when I contacted on LinkedIn a guy from my town who created a startup exactly as it was in my mind and told him “I want to do the same”. He replied “you just have to jump”
And I jumped.
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